Out of the Nuclear Shadow: Scientists and the Struggle Against the Bomb

IT IS 5 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT ® Feature Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2015, Vol. 71(1) 59–69 ! The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: Out of the nuclear shadow: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0096340214563680 Scientists and the struggle http://thebulletin.sagepub.com against the Bomb Zia Mian Abstract In this essay, adapted from his 2014 Linus Pauling Legacy Award Lecture, Zia Mian, from Princeton UniversityÕs Program on Science and Global Security, argues that the ideas Nobel laureate Linus Pauling and other scientists struggled hard over the decades to teach the world have now become widely accepted: The world understands the danger of nuclear weapons. But in the essay, Mian argues that absent an aroused and insistent public demanding an end to nuclear weapons, which the early scientists believed was necessary to curb the nuclear danger, the prospects for nuclear disarmament in the foreseeable future appear grim. He concludes: ÒThis is where the scientist has to step aside and the citizen has to step forward.Ó Keywords Albert Einstein, Cold War history, Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, Eugene Rabinowitch, Franck Report, Frank von Hippel, International Panel on Fissile Materials, Leo Szilard, Linus Pauling, Pugwash his past year marked the 20th Pauling protested on the following day anniversary of the death of Linus also, and then went in to the White House T Pauling, a Nobel Prize-winning state dinner for 49 Nobel Prize winners to American scientist and a key figure in which he had been invited by President the global movement to abolish nuclear John F. Kennedy. Pauling, who had won weapons. The history of this movement, the 1954 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, may and PaulingÕs role in it, is documented in have been the only one of the 49 Nobel the remarkable three-volume series Prize winners who was in the protest. The Struggle against the Bomb (Wittner, Eighteen months later, Kennedy 1993, 1997, 2003). signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, One of the most well-known photo- and Pauling subsequently received the graphs of Pauling shows him in his Nobel Peace Prize in 1963 for his contri- shirtsleeves, carrying a banner as part of bution to achieving the treaty. It made a mass protest at the White House. The Pauling the only person to win two photo is from April 28, 1962 and was part undivided Nobel Prizes. of a campaign against the resumption of Everyone who does so has his or her atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. reasons for joining the struggle against Downloaded from bos.sagepub.com at PRINCETON UNIV LIBRARY on January 7, 2016 60 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 71(1) the Bomb. Twenty years after his Nobel a weapon by which he could destroy the Peace Prize, Pauling explained why he Earth if he choseÓ (Soddy, 1904: 251”252). had spent so many years writing, speak- It took 30 years before someone ing out, organizing scientists around the worked out the nature of the lever that world to sign public petitions, and join- Soddy had imagined could control the ing in protests: release of atomic energy. It was Leo Szi- lard, a Hungarian Jewish physicist who All human beings, all citizens, have a responsi- studied in Germany and ended up as a bility for doing their part in the democratic refugee in the United States, living for process. But almost every issue has some sci- entific aspect to it, and this one of nuclear war, some time in Princeton. SzilardÕs life or war in general, is of course very much a has been chronicled in Genius in the matter of science. (Kreisler, 1983: 7) Shadows (Lanouette, 1992). In 1933, while crossing the street in This meant, as Pauling put it, Òthat sci- London, Szilard came up with the idea entists have a special responsibility.Ó of a nuclear chain reaction that in his words could Òliberate energy on an The future in their bones industrial scale, and construct atomic bombsÓ (Rhodes, 1986: 28). The idea The scientist has Òthe future in their was simple. He imagined an atom bones,Ó declared the British chemist undergoing a nuclear reaction that pro- and writer C. P. Snow in his 1959 lecture duced neutrons and that these neutrons at Cambridge University ÒThe Two would in turn induce other similar atoms CulturesÓ (Snow, 1959). If this is true, to undergo the same reaction and pro- then the fear of nuclear weapons has duce another set of neutrons and so been in the bones of scientists for over cause a cascade of such reactions. a hundred years. Understanding the potentially terrible Soon after Henri Becquerel dis- implications of his discovery, Szilard covered radioactivity in 1896, Marie tried to keep it a secret. He also knew it and Pierre Curie found that it was a prop- was only a matter of time until other erty of the uranium atom and possibly atomic scientists discovered the idea. In other atoms. Then, in 1901, Frederick 1936, he suggested the need for Òa con- Soddy and Ernest Rutherford showed spiracy of those scientists who work in that radioactivity was part of the process this fieldÓ (Wittner, 1993: 6). by which atoms changed from one kind Szilard tried to convince other key to another and involved the release of scientists who were working on the energy. It was not long until Soddy and problem to not publish their work in sci- other scientists began to suggest atomic entific journals. In his letters to them, he energy could be used to make fearsome warned that if there was progress on the weapons. discovery of a nuclear chain reaction and In 1903, less than a decade after this work became public, Òthis might BecquerelÕs discovery, Soddy warned: then lead to the construction of bombs ÒThe man who put his hand on the lever which would be extremely dangerous by which a parsimonious nature regu- in general and particularly in the hands lates so jealously the output of this of certain governmentsÓ (Lanouette, store of [atomic] energy would possess 1992: 182). Downloaded from bos.sagepub.com at PRINCETON UNIV LIBRARY on January 7, 2016 Mian 61 But other physicists did not agree. but it will probably cover the center of a In March and April 1939 papers were big city.Ó published showing that when a neutron They also pointed out that: caused the fission of a nucleus of uranium, along with releasing energy it some part of the energy set free by the bomb created more neutrons which could in goes to produce radioactive substances, and these will emit very powerful and danger- principle then cause other nuclei of ous radiations ...Even for days after the explo- uranium to fission, producing a runaway sion any person entering the affected area will nuclear chain reaction. be killed. Some of this radioactivity will be car- Szilard later reflected that there was ried along with the wind and will spread the con- tamination; several miles downwind this may Òvery little doubt in my mind that the kill people. (Frisch and Peierls, 1940) world was headed for griefÓ (Wittner, 1993: 7). Finally, they explained in their memo Sleepless nights that Òowing to the spread of radioactive substances with the wind, the bomb When Szilard had worried in the late could probably not be used without kill- 1930s about the construction of nuclear ing large numbers of civilians, and this weapons, he had in mind the Nazis in may make it unsuitable as a weapon for Germany. In March 1939, the German use by this country.Ó armies invaded Czechoslovakia and the It was a stunningly accurate analysis world plunged into war. of the physical effects of a nuclear By 1940, physicists were starting to weapon. The scientists also pointed out understand what might be involved in the core moral and political challenge of building a nuclear weapon, and what building a bomb with such large-scale the effects of such a weapon might be. and indiscriminate effects. It was a har- Working together in England, two rowing insight. And the whole thing was German physicists, Otto Frisch and kept secret from the public. Rudolf Peierls, wrote a memorandum to The Frisch-Peierls memo of 1940 led the British government called, omin- to the establishment of BritainÕs nuclear ously, ÒOn the Construction of a ÔSuper- weapons program. Among the people bombÕÓ (Frisch and Peierls, 1940). involved in the program was James In this memo, they described the Chadwick, the discoverer of the neutron, basic principle of building a simple nu- the particle that makes the nuclear chain clear weapon from uranium. They reaction possible. argued that it was quite conceivable that Many years later, Chadwick recalled Germany was developing such a weapon what happened in the spring of 1941 when andproposedtotheBritishgovernment he realized that a nuclear weapon was a that Òthe most effective reply would be a real possibility. He told an interviewer: counter-threat with a similar bomb.Ó In their memo, Frisch and Peierls I remember ...to this day ...I had many sleep- imagined what an atomic bomb could less nights ...And I had then to start taking sleeping pills. It was the only remedy. IÕve do:ÒTheblastfromsuchanexplosion never stopped since then. ItÕs 28 years, and I woulddestroylifeinawidearea.The donÕt think IÕve missed a single night in all size of this area is difficult to estimate, those 28 years. (Weiner, 1969) Downloaded from bos.sagepub.com at PRINCETON UNIV LIBRARY on January 7, 2016 62 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 71(1) Britain did not have the resources to for the safety of this country as well as for the carry the atomic bomb program forward, future of all the other nations, of which the rest of mankind is unaware.

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